All In

I have been documenting the odyssey of building the Fine Molds 1/72 scale X-Wing fighter.  The difficulties are all mine and this kit is absolutely fantastic.  The engineering is so good.  Seems are usually hidden or made to look like they belong on the model.  The fit is amazing.  It makes me wonder why most miniature companies, especially the larger ones can’t match or even approach the this level of engineering.  Anyway, even though it has been a trial at times, I have had lots of fun and learned many new skills.

Now, I am not part of the scale modeling community like I am a member of the miniature war gaming scene.  So, I had not heard that Fine Molds had lost their Star Wars license at the beginning of the year.  Thus, I did not know until a week ago, that all of the amazing Fine Molds kits would be out of production by the end of the year.  I quickly hit the internet and found most of the kits out of stock.  When I looked deeper, many of the kits were selling for 2-3X their retail value.  I quickly made a decision and went on an internet hunt.  I managed to find four more kits to build.  This is what I bought:

 

There were a few others available for reasonable prices if you looked hard enough, but it was at this point that I ran out of hobby budget.  I’m now hobby broke, but if I add this haul to all of the minis I have to paint, I should be set for quite some time.

FYI, the Star Wars license was awarded to Ban Dai, which is best known for making Gundam models.  Their product looks high quality, but so far, not to my taste.  The ships seem to have too pronounced panel lines and look too toy like.  I really don’t nee to worry about it for a while though, given what is in the mail for me.

Of Trials and Tribulations

I’ve been working off and on (mostly off) on my X-Wing.  It is hockey season and the holiday season, so time in the Man Cave is limited.  Since last I posted I have assembled the cockpit and the fuselage.    I also filled some gaps that resulted from my inexperience.  I did a bit of a shit job filling the gaps.  I think they’ll look fine when viewed from an appropriate distance by someone who doesn’t know they are there.  Again, this project has had a HUGE learning curve.  I have been spending lots of hobby time watching YouTube videos about scale modeling, so I sort of know what I’m doing next time.

When it was time to paint, I tried my had at pre-shading.  For those not in the know, that is the technique by which you give the look of weathering by painting black along the panel lines.  Theoretically, when you paint your final colour, the shading shows through and looks like wear, dirt, etc. around the panels.  When done competently, it looks really sharp.  By now you know that competence is not my bag.  I started out well, but then started to suffer from dry tip.  The only problem is that it took me too long to realize dry tip was my problem.  So, the whole pres-hading looked like crap.  Luckily, I was able to paint over the shading and it looks ok, I think.  It is time to weather now.  More tutorials and probably more mistakes.  As I tell my students, everything is hard until you’ve practiced enough that it isn’t.